I am but a humble traveler, blessed beyond what I could ever ask for.

Month: December 2014

As we’re getting ready to say goodbye to 2014, it’s time yet again for countdowns — our customary way of looking back on the year that was. So, I decided to write one of my own: my list of top new restaurant finds of the year. 1. Bocuse Restaurant at the Culinary Institute of America(Hyde Park, NY) For Valentine’s Day this year, my boyfriend and I decided we were going to give each other a list of things we would like to do for the year in lieu of presents. On his list was the Culinary Institute for America, which I had written about here in a prior post. I had also mentioned how we had one of the best dishes — maybe in the top 5 of our lives — the Guinea Hen at Bocuse. Later in the year, we went back for their lunch service. They had a surprisingly reasonably priced prix fixe lunch menu option, which we took advantage of. For my appetizer, I had the poached lobster with avocado and sweet …

Last night I went to dinner out with my parents, and we decided we were going to try a new restaurant recommended by my mom’s coworker. Dong Bang Grill is a Korean restaurant located just about five minutes off the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey. We got there around 6:00 in the evening, it was the perfect time to go because it was just before it got busy. The ambiance was nice, you have to climb up stairs to the second floor, where the tables and other furniture are all made of dark wood. It is also interesting and a great surprise that even after the restaurants filled with people, the noise level stayed low. The wait staff were all wearing headsets — each time they take an order, they phone in the order so it’s ready for them and they can serve to the tables much faster. The food was very good. Everything was fresh, from the side dishes to the meats (the galbi was superb) and even the fish (which …

Travel opens one up to a multitude of experiences. The luckiest of us see the realities of life in the midst of our journeys, good and bad, and even in the most everyday and simplest of situations are confronted with truths about the world we live in. I am an idealist, and those stereotypes often heard in stories and read in books, are just that to me. Stories and history — after all, we have come a long way and are well into the most modern of times. Until we sat down to grab lunch at a restaurant in Marseilles, with tables of people being served their food, and a waiter comes over to our table and tells us that they are closed and no longer serving food when it was clear they were still taking other people’s orders. Why us? Was it that I am Asian? Was it because my boyfriend is American? Was it that we were together and from the States? Did they not like the way we looked, how we were …

There is an age-old belief that if you make a wish and throw a coin with your right hand over your left shoulder into the Fontana Di Trevi, you are sure to go back to Rome. It was also one of the items on my bucket list — so when we had the chance to go to Rome during our Mediterranean Cruise early last year, we made our way to the Trevi Fountain. As expected it was very crowded, but we still managed to squeeze into a nice spot in front, throw our respective coins, and make a wish. Later the same year, we were back in Rome. Have you made a wish at the Fontana Di Trevi? I was very happy to have checked this off my bucket list last year. What is on your bucket list that you would like to check off this coming year?

When I was younger, I went to a leadership seminar where the whole week was dedicated to “knowing thyself.” I thought then, still very naïve, that a week of introspection led me to the answer. Some of my contemporaries, even more naive, thought they already had the answer. A few years later in my 20’s, I realized that I did not fully know what I wanted to do, which direction I wanted to go, being introduced for the first time to the realities of failure and hard choices, hence questioning — perhaps I really did not know myself. It led to anxious self doubt, and yet each day I learned more and more and started to realize the person I was at 15 wasn’t the person I was at 20, and had grown leaps between 20 and 21. Today, I am learning that the idea of looking at oneself as a constant looks great on paper, but in reality is an illusion. Self reflection, looking at ourselves in a mirror or under a microscope, in …